Quiet Time: And why I am doing it

 

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
― Norton Juster

Hey, Lovelies.

Since earlier this year I have been making time to slow down, to get quiet, to rest, and to reflect. At first that was difficult to do. I have always pushed myself hard. I’ve been used to having full days, and using any down time to be productive with personal projects and family time. (Unless I have been half-dead and in bed – usually that has to be in a hospital, or post a major hospitalisation – so that I am forced to stop, and that’s often when I do my biggest inner work. Over the years there has been plenty of time for that kind of spiritual journeying.) It’s also been a family pattern, and one I have further honed through the taught values of various academic institutions, to work stupidly hard, to bear all your own suffering without complaint or support and just keep going, and to see that as somehow a pathway to personal value and self-worth.

And yet, 2023 energies have somehow conspired to encourage me to slow down. The year’s spiritual energies are all about the inner journey, and bringing to the surface what has been hidden, so I have consciously made more space for that part of my life – which was already rich, but so often spent in service to others rather than time for myself. Of course, my doctor did recently sit on my bed, hold my hand, and tell me to completely change my life, so there has been that too.

I’ve started working with a trauma psychologist. As a highly sensitive person, one with intuitive and psychic abilities, the work I do  – both the work I did in the corporate world (where I worked developing training resources and courses for first responders – emergency services and military – including courses after 9-11 and the Bali bombings in disaster victim identification and Urban Search And Rescue) and with clients (which often involves holding space for people at the darkest times in their lives, advocating for those who have lost their voice, or supporting people at end stage of life) and my own several medical traumas and near-death experiences – I can see that I was using busy-ness to hold all of that unprocessed trauma at bay. Add to this a pandemic, the deaths of loved ones and clients, lockdowns, more bad health episodes and more bad health news for myself, and sitting in hospitals with loved ones triggering PTSD in me. Suddenly, it has felt like too many things, and my usual coping mechanisms were not enough anymore. So I reached out for help.

How can my body heal, when my mind and psyche are traumatised?

To break this cycle, right now I am practicing letting myself have all the time I need. I am working through the inner voices in my head that make me feel selfish, or lazy, or unworthy, or uncomfortable if I stop and do nothing.

I am also working with things my Aboriginal Aunties and other indigenous Elders shared with me, and that I had never applied in my life with any kind of consistency. Why? Because they took too much time!

So, that’s why you have seen less of me here on the blog, and on social media lately. As I am processing trauma, grief and complex emotions, and as I am living with complex illnesses, I sometimes need to just stop. To just be. To get quiet, and let the quiet work its magic.

That might sound peaceful, but it hasn’t been. It is one of the hardest things I have done. It’s not comfortable to move into the things you have tried to hold back, unsee or ignore. It’s hard to look at your flaws, poor decisions, and crappy coping mechanisms, and to work on consciously changing those. It’s hard to accept that poor ongoing or worsening health may be your reality.

It’s often distressing on the way to finding peace. But it’s a process to which I am committed, in order to clear enough headspace for my creative work, and my deepest spiritual work. In order for me to find that deeper peace that I have glimpsed, or held during meditation and retreats, and carried back into the real world for just a while.

Already I am spending more time in that peaceful space, that considered space, that place of pause and wisdom, or where I am able to sit with an empty mind and a full heart and simply be at one with my surroundings. It reminds me that change is possible. If I do the work. It won’t happen on its own.

I want to live from that peace at the core of my being. I know it’s there. I don’t have to create it. Instead, I need to move away what obscures it and gives me the illusion that it is just out of reach. Doing self-work is the hardest work that we can do, but it is also the most rewarding.

I’m sharing my story today because for people like us (you, in my community who are also empathic, heart-open, sensitive, intuitive or psychic) trauma is a natural side-effect of that unmanaged sensitivity – especially in childhood, and in love relationships. By sharing my journey, I hope you may consider your own situation, and whether you would benefit from quiet time. Or perhaps even some skilled support.

I’ll keep sharing my journey as I walk this healing path. There’s learning I hope to one day share too.

Love, breathwork, tears, smiles and calmer moments, Nicole xx